Science & Technology

One of the most devastating diseases known to man is smallpox. More people died from this contagious and sometimes fatal infectious disease than from any other disease in history. But in 1796, Edward Jenner, a country doctor in rural England, developed the smallpox vaccine. Jenner’s vaccine not only makes him the first person to successfully develop […]

Most people have heard of Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg and their solar-powered airplane, Solar Impulse 2. They flew 40,000 km (around 24,850 miles) around the world to promote clean technologies. But another explorer is on a mission to sail from the Pacific to the Atlantic in a solar-powered electric boat. Her name is Anne […]

What we eat influences our health. But how much we eat does too. Studies show that fasting, or even periodically adopting a low-calorie diet that mimics the effects of fasting, may generate a wide range of health benefits. These include increased weight loss, normalizing insulin sensitivity and even slowing down the aging process. Dr. Joel Fuhrman, author […]

Some 844 million people worldwide have no access to clean, safe water – meaning one in every nine people (water.org figures). Yet about 13,000 cubic kilometers (3,100 cubic miles) of fresh, clean water in the atmosphere are just waiting to be used. That is more than what is in all the rivers and freshwater reservoirs […]

Advances to eradicate polio, the viral disease that can affect a person’s nerves, leading to partial or complete paralysis, constitute good news. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over the past 30 years, 20 million volunteers have vaccinated more than 2.5 billion children globally against the disease, saving 16 million people from paralysis. In April […]

Blockchain has the potential to topple business models and transform global supply chains, and thus disrupt industrial practices, especially crooked ones. Take the issue of forced labor, for instance. According to the International Labour Organization, “At any given time in 2016, an estimated 40.3 million people [were] in modern slavery, including 24.9 in forced labour. … Out of the 24.9 […]

Crows are very intelligent birds, or so most ornithologists tend to believe. They use tools and can solve problems, and some, including the common raven (Corvus corax), can learn to talk better than certain parrots. One small Dutch company, called Crowded Cities, is using crows’ intelligence for the public good. The company has created an apparatus, the Crowbar, to train the birds […]

Companies are using drones to fight deforestation. One of them, BioCarbon Engineering, based in Oxford, England, aims to plant as many as 1 billion trees per year. It uses drones flying 300 feet over land to map an area’s level of deforestation, topography and soil quality, and report its potential for reforestation. With that information, automated planting drones carrying […]

Do you live in an urban setting? If so, consider planting a rooftop garden. Besides the decorative benefit, roof plantings can provide fresh food, contact with nature and beauty, habitats or corridors for wildlife, noise absorption, recreational opportunities, cooling mechanisms, hydrological advantages and less pollution. What’s more, large-scale adoption could even have ecological benefits. Nine good reasons to […]

Pneumonia kills as many as 940,000 children under the age of five every year and is a major cause of infant mortality, particularly in less-developed countries, according to UNICEF. But now a new alliance between UNICEF and Spanish “la Caixa” Foundation, one of the largest private charities in the world, aims to “save the lives of thousands […]